25 Years and Still Going Strong

22 July 2011 | 12:03 am

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The club was started by Bernard Coetzee a man who was involved with most clubs in the Cape Area. Bernard was my mentor and was a crusty old man but he had wonderful skills and design ideas. He was also the man responsible for the design before style concept. We have always been a family club and I mean just that, over the years at meetings it was not uncommon to hear babies crying in the back of the hall. Mothers and father used to feed their babies as the lecturer was doing a presentation. Just last month saw Chantelle at a meeting with her new baby who already is part of the club. At the Easter Show I saw an old member (Derrick and Hilletjie and their three grown boys) who used to travel in from Malmesbury with their babies, and never missed a meeting until the family got too large.

Members will tell you about the quality of lectures and demonstrations and the lengths the person doing the demo will go to in putting together a quality presentation, especially in the field of audio/visual, some of which are really professional.

What a line-up of lecturers and demonstrators we have with Dr Carl Morrow, Freddie Bisschoff and Viky Petermann being the main contributors. We are also known as the club which goes the extra mile with regard to giving assistance to all, from beginners to experienced members who just want to talk about their latest design involving an  awkward tree.

We run beginners courses and workshops which are taught by more experienced growers who do it just for the love of Bonsai and the positive effect on the club.  Some of our other achievements are, starting the Young designer Competition to aid new talent bringing them to the fore.

We started the Winter Show which has been taken on by one of Cape Town’s largest Nurseries Starke Ayres. We are a very active club always trying and looking for new initiatives

Watch this space for our next idea to be launched next year.

It’s not unusual for members to “email” me, (as a committee member) sometimes with minor complaints but mostly to express their thanks and gratitude for an event which has taken place. The following was part of such a mail which landed on my desk after our annual dig,     

Gents,

Today was the best dig I have been on in my yamadori career.  Ignoring the wonderful trees that came out, I think the spirit amongst the members was absolutely fantastic! 

This was caused me to stop and really think about what a wonderful Kai we have.

The dig in question was Oyama’s  annual dig which is held on a friendly farmers property and Oyama members have had the privilege of invading the property every year since 1987. Some great trees have come out of this property and we have had some wonderful experiences on these digs. For some obscure reason this day was different, we had the same type of motley crew assembled at the meeting point, the only differences was Rudi Adam who we had invited because he is an honorary member and had never been on a Oyama dig. There were plus minus twenty people who turned up, a few more than usual, but from the start there was a buzz amongst the guys and gals and they were raring to go. At the dig site I reminded them of normal dig etiquette; fill in your digging hole with cut branches and soil. 1 tree per person and make sure you know what to do with the tree before you dig it out. Be safe, have fun, and off we went into the bush.           

Phil, Cindy and Zaahir found ourselves grouped together and we set about investigating the potential of the vast amount of Olives in the field. Phil and Cindy had not had a good experience at the previous dig and due to inexperience had extracted some miserable specimens fit only for the braai so I really wanted to get them a good tree.

As we walked Cindy asked me about the 1 tree per person rule and what I meant about not digging a tree you don’t know what to do with. I explained that in general we had found that a person could not handle more than one tree a year and that also by preserving the site and rationing the trees it meant we had trees for future members. The knowing what to do with the dug tree goes back to one of South Africa’s deceased growers who I had a huge respect for and that was Werner Bub (A person you really could call Master) who said that “when new growers” found a tree they liked they should sit in front of the tree and design it in their mind making sure that the tree had all the attributes needed to make a quality Bonsai” After all what is the use of going to all the effort to dig the tree out, if when you eventually get it out it is not to your liking and it looks different now it is out! But then it is too late and the tree is wasted because you will never really like the tree and you will not make an effort to improve the tree. Cindy said she had never seen me sitting before the tree evaluating it, I told her when you are older and more experienced, and your joints are stiff you can see from a standing position and do the same thing. I’m pleased to say Cindy saw the sense in these ideas.                                     

We found a tree, but I was not happy, the tree was superb with quite a few trunks erupting from surface roots which were quite spectacular but it was in rocks. I have had several unpleasant experiences in rocks before and failed so I was not to thrilled .The tree though was really good  and would yield enough trees for the four of us so I thought let’s give it half an hour and if we had not made an impression on the rocks we would move on. Phil had brought along a digger called Elliot who was to prove extremely useful, a 1,8m crow bar. As mentioned the tree we found was in rocks but in no time Elliot with the crow bar a rope and three hangers on, Cindy cheering us on, we had moved the huge rock out of the way, so we were on the way. Four hours later after a lot of cutting heaving more rocks out and swearing, as well as borrowing a chain saw to cut two largish roots the tree was out and we had six excellent trees lying on the ground. Phil wanted the main trunk which had good movement a good base and bark, he was well pleased. Cindy had a good trunk not as large as Phil’s but with all the attributes. I think Zaahir got the pick of the day with two trunks with fantastic movement one about 80mm thick and the other about 100mm, I have never seen movement on an Olive as that one had, I settled for a wonderful semi-cascade with really good movement. The other sections of trunk we will cut up and distribute to friends who couldn’t make it to the dig.

Once the trees were bagged, Phil and the rest of us went to collect all the large trees around the site in his off road bakkie and transported the tree back to the parked vehicles. This was luxury for me and the first time it had happened, we always had to lug our trees back to the vehicles and it was this that usually put you on your back for half an hour  Only when  all the tree were assembled did we see  the quality of trees that had been dug.

What contributed to making the day was when back at the cars Freddie asked if anyone was hungry or thirsty, he then proceeded to take out of the boot of his car a feast of bread sandwiches chips beers, cool drinks coffee which everyone fell on, it was the perfect end to a fantastic day.

The majority of tree dug were all dug with the assistance of others whether it was by physical assistance or the loan of tools such as chain saw or crow bars or sharp saws which is what prompted the mail to me and me to write about our fabulous Kai and the camaraderie we enjoy.

Let’s hope the next 25 years are just as good and exciting and filled with wonderful experiences to do with the wonderful art of Bonsai.  

Words cannot describe the quality so I hope the pictures that were taken convey this to you.  Thanks to Cindy, Freddie and Geoff for the photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

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